9-buy in downswing. session review.

[CallYNotRaise06]

**ahem...this is long.


i just finished a 1500 hand session, and definitly the biggest downswing i have ever experienced. Psychologicly, i really dont feel too bad. I know i almost lost 4 figures, and the thought of that can be sickening, but it really hasnt affected me. I wont turn this into a bad beat post, although i did lose 3 buy ins twice to 2 outers today. But like the sang goes," thats poker".


One very important thing that great plays do is evaluate their game all the time, i am no where near a great player, im just stating a fact. I try to do it all the time, even durring a winning streak, but especially durring this losing streak because of how big of a loss this was. Im going to try to go through my session, and pick out a few of the biggest things that i could have done better. I think if i find these leaks, and plug them. (suprisingly, the number one problem isnt tilt. im honestly not tilting right now. im frustrated that i lost so much, and played poorly in some spots, but i dont feel that it affected my game.) Maby then ill turn my next 9 buy in downswing, into maby only a 5 buy in downswing. And money saved is just as good as money won.

#1) <font color="blue"> THINK BEFORE YOU ACT </font> This right here, i believe is what brought about this entire downswing. Dispite losing 6 buy-ins to 2 outers tonight, this is the real cause of my downswing. I was doing totally irrational things. i was playing more by emotion, than actual instincts and feel. I got frustrated one hand, and pushed w/ AK on a KJ9 board after he raised my c-bet. Sure the guy was a total donk. sure he coudl have been bluffing. But did i really take the time to analyze the situation correctly? Hell no. i just said screw you, you didnt outdraw me again. Turns out he did. He called with KJ. He practicly told me he had the hand, but i reacted before i could think, and that led to alot of missed out profit.


#2)<font color="blue">Making crying calls </font> . We've all done it before, many times, and today, i did it alot. Way more than i should have. I even called a pot sized river bet from a total donk with AK high. Its just spewage, and i was spewing out the ass tonight. It was like id get frustrated that again someone out flopped me, and id just throw my money away. I was acting way to fast, and not taking a deep breath and just thiking.

Making crying calls happened because im not focusing on reading my opponents good enough. Im not a big fan of mulit-tabling, and i probably wont start playing more than 4 tables untill im up to 1000nl or higher. my first goal is to get that high. Then ill worry abot mulit tabling and such.


#3)<font color="blue"> Playing too many tables </font> was another leak. I play a game that is looser than others. i also experience alot of variance. since a play a different style of poker than most on this forum, i really need to have solid reads on players, and when im playing 4 tables, i cant do that. After 3 i start to see a slip.


#4) <font color="blue"> trying to bluff out better hands </font>. In super system, doyle says"It takes an idiot in my book to bluff a player you know is going to call" Well, im an idiot. I was doing this soooo much today. I would double and tripple barrel OOP a ton. Its good that i have the heart to do that, but it was just spewing chips away. im not gonna lie, it got me a ton of action on the few strong hands that i got tonight, but it didnt help because i was bluffing all of my profit away. Again this all goes back to not having solid reads. I want reads when i play. w/o them in not very good.

#5) <font color="blue"> being way too loose post flop</font> The whole session, i wasnt giving peope credit for hands where i should have. I was always playing back at people on ragged flops, assuming they had missed overs(god that makes me sound like such a donky).


OK, so whats my solution?
#1) Im only going to play 3 tables. No more. I can focus better with 3 tables, and do more damage. I may not get as many hands in, but 1000 good hands is better than 1500 crapy hands. Doing this will allow me to get better reads on players, and that should lead to more profit.

#2)im actually going to schedual breaks durring my sessions. I pretty much played for 3 hours straight w/o a single break. Maby after a tough beat, i played the next hand or 2 a little different than i would have if my mind was clear. So after every hour, i need to take a 10-15 min break. Just to regroup my thoughts, and cool down if im getting irritated.

#3)After losing 3 buy ins, ill ask myself if im really playing my A game, and making good decisions. Im no where near broke, but this is kind of a wake up call to me letting me know that even though im over bankrolled, theres still that risk of going broke, and i cant start slipping in my game just because i have a ton of buy ins for my limit.


Thanks for taking the time to read this, and id love to hear any comments, or stories.

[Push_Fold]

9 buyins in 1500 hands and you say none of that was from tilt. Wow, talk about bad beats and lots of second bests.

Nice post. Good points that all should go over in there mind before starting a session.

[BalugaWhale]

Maybe this could help?

Sorry to hear about it bro... i just took another bad swing (KK was my 6th biggest loser over 20k hands), but its turning back around again. Keep on fighting, you've got the right attitude.

[Kurtiii]

Very good post. I recently had the same experience: dropping about 10 buyins in 4k hands when i just moved up from 50$NL to 100$NL. Of course i got sucked out on alot, but i also payed off every single set with AA,KK when it was very obvious that i was beat. After the first 5-6 buyins i was realy singing the blues, not beeing honest with myself about the 34989 mistakes i made.

The things that kept me alive where :

1.) View every hand individualy, and §)$( stop thinking result orientated. Allways question if i could have lost less without giving up value. If i aplied pot controll correctely against the right type of player, or if i was just afraid etc.
2.) Work on my confidence; if i had a read i went with it and played accordingly. Once again; stoped thinking result oriented. Sure enough that led to some bad raises and calls BUT i actually learned alot from those. Things i wouldn´t have learned if i would have given in to the fear. And once semibluffs and thin calls showed a profit it realy boosted my confidence. Not because i was full of my great plays, but because i knew that i improved my game.
3.) Take breaks, look in the mirror, shorten my sessions. I´m not tilt resistant, so after an hour of loosing i realy need a break to cool down and analyse my play.
Recognize when you are in danger of tilting; for example i made a 170$ call preflop with Kings, lost to aces (obviously :P) and didn´t feel a bit anger or frustration, but knowing myself i still closed the tables and got up for a break. Turned out that i was realy tilting 5 minutes after that and it took me some time to cool down, but it would off cost me alot of money if i kept on playing.
4.) Talk about how you feel and your plays with friends or fellow pokergeeks. This helped me alot to identify WHY i made a certain play. Some of wich i made wheren´t based on reads or math, just pure, and often wrong, "feeling". Obviously one needs instincs to make some plays, and you need to trust them sometimes. But its a thin line between instincts and talking yourself into a call. Since psychology is so important in poker it helps to talk about it with others. They often provide an objective view or things becomes more clear once you try to explain them.

After i started doing all this i slowly stoped thinking about the money and started to consistently think about my game and sure enough: the money took care of itself and i made it back plus more.
Not sure if this contains helpfull advice, since the one thing i learned during this swing was : I realy have a lot of work to do to consider myself a good player. Though i wanted to share it, just in case :P

Oh and one last thing that i kept in my mind was a quote from an european player on the EPT: "what seperates the good players from the bad players is: if they are having a bad time, they survive it".
So .. don´t let swings affect your game, use them to learn.

[TheBeloved]

Aren't reasons 2-5 in effect "tilt" ?

[CallYNotRaise06]

[ QUOTE ]
Aren't reasons 2-5 in effect "tilt" ?

[/ QUOTE ]

I guess you could put it like that, but i didnt really steam. I wasnt angry at anyone, or just throwing around money, i was just playing hands poorly that i know i could have played better. And i believe the reason for that was because i was losing. Maby it was a different kind of tilt, not the normal steaming tilt. Either way, i just have to use this as a way to get better.


thanks for the replies all.

[CallYNotRaise06]

[ QUOTE ]
But its a thin line between instincts and talking yourself into a call.

[/ QUOTE ]

definitly. This was one of my problems yesterday. My thinking would be like..."We'll i guess hes got XX and im beat,....oh wait this guy is a lag he coudl be doing this with air alot too, i better call" It was just irrational thinking because i wasnt focused. i had to many other things going through my mind. Was i going to take another bad beat? Did he suck out again? I was more concerned with things like that than the actual hand. Thats why i decided to take breaks just to give myself a chance to get focused and ready to go again.

[CallYNotRaise06]

baluga,

i read that when you first posted it and it was a great post... infact, im going to read it again right now.

[ZingyDNA]

Call, I think in fact #1-5 are all symptoms of tilting, which is defined to be making irrational decisions for whatever reason. Sometimes you don't realize you're tilting when emotion takes over.

[mudbuddha]

knowing when to take a break is important too